The present invention relates to a new and improved construction of apparatus for use in conjunction with an aircraft for dropping the most sundry types of objects or the like, especially explosive objects, such as bombs, particularly fragmentation bombs, grenades, and mines at tactical flight velocities from relatively low altitudes overground.
The apparatus of the invention is generally of the type which comprises a transport container mounted at the aircraft and containing therein at least one object intended to be released from the aircraft.
During civilian and military use of aircraft it is frequently desired to lay objects over surface-like targets or terrain, such as regions affected by a catastrophe, agriculture regions, gun or weapon emplacement positions, landing fields at airports and so forth. During the tactical employment of military aircraft there are employed for this purpose so-called bomb dumping or scattering containers mounted at the fuselage of the aircraft and after successful dropping of the bombs they are usually dispersed by pyrotechnical means (compare Armada International 1980, Volume No. 3, page 130).
Generally speaking, the apparatus is realized by a container or receptacle mounted at an aircraft where there is beneficially employed a pressure head. For this purpose the object mounted internally of the container upon guide rails is impinged at its front end by the flight-pressure head of the aircraft, so that it is ejected from the tail end of the container. For rapidly realizing the necessary safety distance between the aircraft and the object dropped at the tail end of the container there is deflected a flow onto the departing object so that a pressure pulse is applied to the object and it is accelerated.
Additionally, for economical reasons, particularly when the equipment is used for non-combat tactical employment, reuse of the bomb dumping container is desired.